Wet Spring Slows Work On Trash Center

July 09, 1993|By JIM STRATTON Daily Press

JAMES CITY (COUNTY) — James City's new trash transfer station may not be ready to accept garbage by the time the county closes its landfill this fall.

Wet weather has bogged down work at the site, and the delay threatens to sink a proposed Oct. 9 opening. The date is important because local officials want to close the county landfill by then to keep in line with state and federal regulations, said Larry Foster, the county's service authority director.

The potential gap between the closing of the landfill and the opening of the transfer station has county officials searching for a more short-term solution. They can either build a makeshift storage site or ask trash haulers to cart the waste directly to a landfill. Because each load of trash translates into a load of money, supervisors are wary of option No. 2.

"Obviously, we'd like to have the haulers in the habit of coming to the transfer station," said Supervisor Jack Edwards. "We wouldn't want them to go to other ways" of dumping their trash.

Haulers currently pay $45 per ton to dump trash at the county landfill. That charge will likely increase when the landfill closes. Dumping at the transfer station, Foster said, will probably be cost in the "upper $40s to mid-$50s" per ton.

Finding a temporary answer shouldn't be difficult, Foster said. The county has known "from the beginning that scheduling was going to be tight" and consequently has been looking at stop-gap solutions for several months. There's no danger of county trash piling up with no place to store it, Foster said.

Construction on the $950,000 transfer station is supposed to begin July 15. But a wet spring has thrown the county's site preparation behind schedule. Foster now says there's only a "50-50 chance" it will be ready for an Oct. 9 opening.

"It's easy to forget now," he said, "but we had a real wet spring. And we had to clear about four acres, strip the topsoil. We're working with very tight specifications."

But Steve Geissler, director of operations for the Virginia Peninsulas Public Service Authority, is holding out hope that construction can get started by July 15. VPPSA is working with James City on operation of the station.

Geissler said he visited the site recently and left thinking the starting date might survive.

If it doesn't, he said, the firm building the transfer station will be given an extra day to do its work for each day construction is held up.

All the deadlines, however, may be meaningless if the state and federal governments change their minds about the landfill closure deadline. The Environmental Protection Agency may give states an extra six months to meet new landfill guidelines that require extensive monitoring and financial guarantees. If the feds back off, Virginia may follow suit.

But Foster, Geissler and elected officials in James City aren't counting on that.

"There are so many questions about extending the deadline, it's just not worth it," Foster said. "Until we hear otherwise, we're shooting for the eighth."